Your Next Nightmare: Venomous Snake Bites People in Their Sleep. Unlike most venomous snakes, which tend to bite people who are either handling them or who surprise them, the large Australian mulga snake has also been found to attack people who are asleep.
"Essentially the answer is anywhere that the snake can fit its body is where it can be." He said they'll usually go to warm places low to the ground, so you're not likely to find one in your bed or bathtub.
Leave it alone. Snakes are generally shy and will not attack unless provoked, so it's best to leave them be. If you see a snake inside your home, get all people and pets out of the room immediately.
Even using the highest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of 8,000 annual snakebites per year, the odds of you being bitten are 40,965 to one.
The majority of snakebites occur on the hands, feet and ankles. Rattlesnakes usually avoid humans, but about 8,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States each year, with 10 to 15 deaths, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
You may not always know you were bitten by a snake, especially if you were bitten in water or tall grass. Signs and symptoms of a snakebite may include the following: Two puncture marks at the wound. Redness or swelling around the wound.
Ideally, you'll reach medical help within 30 minutes of being bitten. If the bite is left untreated, your bodily functions will break down over a period of 2 or 3 days and the bite may result in severe organ damage or death.
This may result in redness, swelling, and severe pain at the area, which may take up to an hour to appear. Vomiting, blurred vision, tingling of the limbs, and sweating may result. Most bites are on the hands, arms, or legs. Fear following a bite is common with symptoms of a racing heart and feeling faint.
Avoid wandering around in the dark. If you are out at night, always use a flashlight, because most snakes are active on warm nights. Never try to pick up a snake, even if it is dead. A snake's reflexes can still cause the snake to strike up to an hour after it has died.
When it's cooler, snakes are typically out moving. Just because you see one does not mean there are more. If you see 6+ babies or adults in the same location in a short amount of time, then you have a problem.
Snakes enter a building because they're lured in by dark, damp, cool areas or in search of small animals, like rats and mice, for food. Snakes can be discouraged from entering a home in several ways. Keeping the vegetation around the house cut short can make the home less attractive to small animals and snakes.
Snakes look for a place where they feel protected, which is why it can be difficult to find a snake once one has entered your home. Snakes will hide behind the refrigerator, under the oven, under your bed, or inside cabinets. Snakes will avoid human activity.
Some snakes such as eastern brown snakes are active during the day, others prefer to hunt in the evening, while some species are more active at night during the hotter months. Many snakes have excellent eyesight, but it's not usually the main sense they rely on when hunting.
What scents do snakes dislike? There are many scents snakes don't like including smoke, cinnamon, cloves, onions, garlic, and lime. You can use oils or sprays containing these fragrances or grow plants featuring these scents.
Snakes are most active at night and during early morning and late evening hours, the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension says. One of the most common species of snakes isn't venomous at all.
Wearing loose clothing is preferable to tight clothing. Canvas pants or heavy denim provide an extra barrier that the snake has to bite through. And sometimes, the tough denim fabric the fangs first hit, along with the extra inch of dead air, can release a little venom before it hits the skin.
Keep your legs and torso as far away from the snake as you can while firmly grasping its tail and lifting it upward, leaving the front portion of its body on the ground. Put the snake right away in a pillowcase or bag. Put pressure on it by positioning a forked stick behind its head.
Typical symptoms of the bite from a nonvenomous snake are pain and scratches at the site. Usually, after a bite from a venomous snake, there is severe burning pain at the site within 15 to 30 minutes. This can progress to swelling and bruising at the wound and all the way up the arm or leg.
The black mamba, for example, injects up to 12 times the lethal dose for humans in each bite and may bite as many as 12 times in a single attack. This mamba has the fastest-acting venom of any snake, but humans are much larger than its usual prey so it still takes 20 minutes for you to die.
A venomous snake bite will usually leave two clear puncture marks. In contrast, a nonvenomous bite tends to leave two rows of teeth marks. It can be difficult to tell the difference between puncture wounds from venomous and nonvenomous snakes. People should seek medical attention for all snake bites.
Both venomous and nonvenomous snakes are extremely wary of humans and are not prone to strike. A bite is their last-ditch effort to avoid harm. Simply leaving a snake to do its job in the landscape is the best way to avoid a bad encounter.
"There is residual electrical energy, for a lack of a better word, so it may move. "So, if you decapitate a snake and then pick up the head, it's fully capable of biting," Pfaff says.